Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

I only wish I came across Creative Strategy and the Business of Design and Douglas Davis’s important work sooner. His point of view and what CSBD teaches not only educates, but elevates our design community. I’d first come across Douglas Davis on The Futur podcast, and knew right away I had to pick up this book--I was not disappointed. Since then, I’ve not only been able to transform my perspective of design, but also my approach to creativity and design as well. By coincidence, I’d recently been able to connect with Douglas through his work with AIGA, and I am now growing my side hustle in design to include branding and brand strategy.Having worked as an in-house graphic designer over two years, I heard these four words all too many times: “Just Make It Pretty”. Although I knew my team and I had the same goals for our clients and our company--the concepts, language and jargon of business always intimidated me. To boot, there was always a lack of understanding on both sides of our team. Yet over time, I’d always wonder why I was not part of any strategy meetings, or only get pulled in at the end of them--to take orders and push pixels.CBSD is an essential resource for creatives, creative entrepreneurs, and creative teams, teaching you the language, framework, and tools you’ll need for your business as well as devising and implementing successful strategies and strategic thinking. Davis’s work is thorough and in-depth, yet his approach and writing style is down-to-earth. This book is packed with insights, references, resources, examples, personal anecdotes--including gems from Davis’s mentors, peers, and students. Or you can train in slaying your creative career dragons by taking on and tackling the number of exercises and projects to reinforce the powerful framework of creative strategy.

This book is a fantastic resource for any creative or designer aiming to break through and level up as a creative professional. In this book Davis recounts his experience as a junior level designer and when he began to understand that to have a seat at the table where important decisions are made- we as creatives need to learn the language of business and speak directly to the objectives of stakeholders and clients.Davis lays it all out in easy to digest, insightful, and engaging storytelling paired with a tactical approaches creatives can easily reference and put into practice. The Creative Strategy Framework devised by Davis alone is worth the price of admission and has changed the way I personally approach any creative brief. Since reading this book and understanding the concepts I’ve gone from being a set of hands merely existing to execute someone else’s vision, to playing a strategic creative role as a senior level creative. Get this book, put the learning to practice, elevate your status.

This book is a great resource for all creatives looking to add more value to their work and have a deeper understanding of the necessary process behind design execution. It has approachable, actionable steps that you can begin implementing immediately. This book will help you become a more thoughtful designer and increase your understanding of the strategy behind any design brief or project.On a personal level, I always felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzle when working on creative client projects. I knew there was a more strategic way of beginning new design projects, but wasn't quite sure how to get there consistently. This book helped me solidify my project process, understand the language around business and strategy, know the right questions to ask when beginning any design project and understand how to organize incoming information to better inform my design goals.I was able to start putting Douglas's concepts into practice right away and have already seen a shift in the way I structure and execute new projects.Thank you Douglas!

Very insightful for designers especially for freelancers and design business owners.

CSBD is as comprehensive as it is barebones, with it offering just enough structure to inspire the reader, without overexplaining. As a Communications professional teaching several undergraduate courses, I've assigned CSBD in my most senior course to prepare students for an intensive experience where they work on a semester-long pitch project for a real client.CSBD offers a series of frameworks and processes to help creative professionals produce insight-driven, strategically sound campaigns while knowing how to pre-set and deliver against numerical campaign benchmarks - which is what clients are ultimately most concerned about. The book really does offer a wealth of content that delivers on its premise - helping the reader "think how they think to do what we do." As an added treat, Douglas' writing style weaves in a number of anecdotes and "war stories", making CSBD feel less textbook, despite the trove of functional guidance within its pages.I highly recommend CSBD to any junior creative professional who's curious to learn how to simultaneously approach the design and business side of working with clients, and any mid-level/senior looking to refine and polish how they work with creatives and designers.

Amazing read, Douglas is helping me see the business side of Art. I recently starting designing for corporate and commercial businesses and his insight is very helpful.My take away is “research is your best friend”. It helps you have awareness while building yourself, your brand, and improving work for clients.

I was totally in love with this book, I got a freelance from a startup to fix their product-building & marketing process as they are making a ton of mistakes repeatedly, and all 4 product managers, marketers and were frustrated by this issue.One of the founders was a friend of mine who had given me a call and asked to fix it.Very soon I realized that it was because of the misalignment of the product team & marketing team, they are totally polarised in their thoughts, and at this time I introduced a simple process :for Product team it was : Business requirements > User Requirements > Feasible Features > Content Viabilityfor Marketing & Branding team it was: Features > Benefits > Value > Key Messageso what was missing earlier? the communicative bridge between, Product: People: Profit.and it took 3 days to hand off this process from start to end to the startup team.The head of product & director of marketing feels so relieved after a successful trial of the session. They thanked me & asked me how much he owns me. I said, "$10,000 (750,659 INR)"The Head of the product was shocked. " What do mean, $10,000 ? You were here for a few days only. You delivered a simple framework. Anyone amature designer could google and do that. I need an invoice breakdown, please."I understood they measure work basis on time not on the value delivered, So I reaches my Bonsai invoice and hand shared the invoice to his mail.The head of the product reads it and immediately transfers the balance.The invoice read: Process Framework delivery- $ 1000. Knowing what Creative strategy to introduce: $9000."---------------------There are those who know & there are those who don’t know, and that applied knowledge is not just power, it's a profit."Creative Strategy and the Business of Design" is filled with many of such business thoughts, frameworks & strategies I've discovered to give me the results and rewards for my efforts.I have read and absorbed each page of the book like Goku absorbs nature's energy to make a spirit bomb in the Dragonball Z series. and It was about two be 2 years since I finished but even today I dive inside the book to find gemsHats off to Douglas Davis & the team!

The media could not be loaded. el libro esta muy bueno y llego en buenas condiciones.

This book has helped me understand a lot of what goes on behind the scenes of designing. There are a lot of business concepts in this book that give you great insight on how top creatives work and build successful creative projects that match the business goals of a company. At the end of the book, there is an included chapter of assignments that you can work through to put the concepts in the book into action which really help you think through what you read and reinforce the ideas from the book (which is a huge plus since i had no idea where to begin to implement these ideas). Definitely a book you want to keep on hand to reference and look back on.

A great book with a lot of targeted and easy to find actionable advice. It is so easy to read and I highly recommend it for any designer or creative person out there. No matter your skill-set or the level you are at. This book will enhance your understanding of what you are actually trying to accomplish with your design. Easily one of the best books I've read this year.

Pure gold